Riptide Shapeshifter

Creature — Shapeshifter

(2)(Blue)(Blue), Sacrifice Riptide Shapeshifter: Choose a creature type. Reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a creature card of that type. Put that card into play and shuffle the rest into your library.

Riptide Shapeshifter Discussion

1 month ago

So, nearly a week since I last updated. I feel like enough of the substitutions have aggregated to warrant a new commentary.

First up, more Haste providers. Ogre Battledriver and In the Web of War now join the ranks of the already present Temur Ascendancy and Cavalier of Flame. Upping the chances of Haste feels like the right call to help close out games. After playing even just one Windfall-like card, you'll suddenly have up to 21 new snake friends to play with and Haste makes them immediately viable beyond ETB and Sacrifice effects. Whether it be for the swing or making mad Mana with Cryptolith Rite, it'll be sure to make an impression (especially if you keep your Haste a secret until the turn of).

You could say that the Riptide Shapeshifter is my budget option replacing Tooth and Nail. On the plus side, I like that you can activate its ability at any time, which can make for a neat Combat Trick if you choose "Beast". "God" is also a good choice, as Purphoros, God of the Forge and The Locust God both really hum in this deck.

Thanks for reading this far, by the way! There hasn't been much outside interaction to date (it feels like I'm talking to the wind). But maybe I'm wrong, since there's no way of knowing how many folks take the time to navigate my admittedly chonky stream of consciousness.

Rushing River great removal, really underplayed, fits the theme / you can try something revolving around self land destruction if you decide to give it a try (Crop Rotation, Crucible of Worlds, Wasteland, etc.)

River Kelpie interesting creature, which design feels otherworldly and weird, according to the Surrakars /n needs a graveyard gameplan to be effective, and that will seem fine (obvious synergy is [card:Cauldron of Souls] and it's a playable card in there) / pretty good interactions with Yarok / card draw

Carpet of Flowers staple in lots of decks for mana production, depends on your playgroup though

1 year ago

Due to the legend rule, you do not have a chance to gain priority before you have to sacrifice the new one, meaning you cannot draw your deck, bounce everything ect. You'd have to have a
Mirror Gallery
type effect.

A fun consideration, could be
Riptide Shapeshifter
. At its worst, it might get you something you need. At its best? Name "giant" to get your
Galecaster Colossus
. Or name Slivers to cheat it directly into play for either flying or unblockable. Hell, you wanna get "real" cute, name "Pirate" and get
Timestream Navigator
. At its worst, it is a Wizard that gets you Wizard activations. At its best? You get an extra turn once in a while.

I feel like you made the right call, in focusing more so on "Wizards" and "Merfolks", cause I had that issue of "here are all of the lords...what do I focus on" type of things. I do feel like
Mind Over Matter
is really only there for the combo potential and nothing else. Perhaps a
Paradox Engine
would be more "value", since you can chain into other spells or have it be a "cheaper" Mind Over Matter, since with Azami out, cast a spell, tap to draw more and have more mana, rinse and repeat. Another change I'd consider, is to remove the Slivers and go with
Archetype of Imagination
and
Deepchannel Mentor
I can see WHY you include Slivers (make them all Slivers with the Hivestone, then make the team unblockable). The only issue I see, is basically its a 2 card combo for evasion. Yes its cheaper to cast those two spells than it is to cast the ones I mentioned, but it also means not having to worry about getting your Slivers or tutoring for them, and it means that you can be closer with your two tribes. Another fun card I want to see, is
Dragon's Hoard
. Cast your commander or any of the changelings to give yourself another small form of card draw.
Merrow Commerce
might also be nice, letting you attack in and then untapping the team. Not to mention Arcane Adaptation naming Merfolk untaps your entire team at EOT. Other combos is the Sage of Fables/Metallic Mimic with
Glen Elendra Archmage
. Not only is it another counter effect, but with something like a sac outlet you can ensure you get infinite death triggers (Phyrexian/Ashnod's Altar, Altar of Dementia ect are all good examples).

I do have to ask; How is Unesh in the deck? Without allot of changelings and not allot of static changes to creature types, similar to Arcane Adaptation, it means that you might get two? Maybe three triggers from it? I am also curious what you USUALLY name with Arcane Adaptation. Do you cane Wizards for the "flexibility" of the "tap an untapped wizard:" type of effects? Or more so the Merfolk for more pumps and evasion?

1 year ago

This is a challenging tribe to build around. I would recommend checking out Saffron Olive's video on finding the competitive advantage of your tribe. Also, Tomer built a phoenix tribal deck for Commander Clash not too long ago. Watch the end to see how he wins, because it's pretty great.

In terms of specific cards, I think
Mana Echoes
would go well, since you need a lot of mana to enable phoenixes.
Thundermaw Hellkite
could be good. Lose
Temple of the False God
and
Dormant Volcano
, though, because those are awful cards. The former because it's useless as a 3rd, 4th, or 5th land, and the latter because it's just asking to be strip-mined and is both slow and makes colorless mana.

Scrolling through the comments, it seems like you want to avoid Felidar Guardian. I think this deck would make a great Eldrazi- Hey, wait, hear me out.
Aminatou gives topdeck control. She can also blink things. Her ultimate is garbage. All in all, not bad. I think you could take a nice little polymorph route on this. I like free Eldrazi. You should too. Just look through these cards, and tell me what you think.

So, your gameplan would be to play Aminatou on T3, play creatures that kill things/draw cards when they enter, blink them with Aminatou repeatedly to kill opponent's things, draw into counterspells, and generally destroy their will to live. Once you have a comfortable lock, +1 Aminatou and put an eldrazi titan on top, polymorph a draw creature into it.

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